Our latest news

NEW OPPORTUNITY: ACTION LEARNING FOR ASSOCIATES

Would you value a supportive space to reflect on work challenges and questions with fellow people make it work Associates?

Leadership coach, facilitator and consultant, Dr. Claire Antrobus is offering to host an exploratory Action Learning session for people make it work Associates with a view to create a new group that meets online 6 times a year to reflect on our practice and learn from one another.

Action Learning is a reflective learning space where peers support one another to generate fresh insights and solutions to challenges they are facing. It is based on the ethos of coaching and uses very similar techniques – including active listening and open questions. Groups commit to meet for a fixed number of sessions.

Sound interesting? No experience of Action Learning is necessary – we’ll discuss what it is and how it works at the start of the session before doing some Action Learning together so you can decide if you’d like to join a group.

In this first session we’ll also discuss when and for how long we meet, but it is expected to be in the region of a 2 hr online slot every 2 months.

 4 possible date options for the first session:

9:30-12:30 or 2-5 Fri 17 March

9:30-12:30 Tue 28 March

2-5 Fri 31 March

Interested? Email claire@claireantrobus.com to find out more.

*SAVE THE DATE* 14th March 2023: Free Webinar on co-leadership and inclusive leadership

Join us on Tuesday 14th March, 16:00-17:30 for a free online webinar chaired by our Director of Sector Change, Sandeep Mahal, which will explore the ways in which co-leadership can enable and embed inclusive leadership.

The cultural sector has shown a huge appetite for investing in and increasing diversity, but systemic issues of inequality and intolerable barriers to progression remain. To support a dynamic transformation of representation at senior levels, this webinar event will unpack and explore ways that co-leadership models can enable and embed inclusive leadership within cultural organisations.

Chaired by Sandeep Mahal, Director of Sector Change at people make it work, we will hear from leadership coach and consultant Dr Claire Antrobus on her AHRC/Clore-funded research Co-leadership: an opportunity for the UK cultural sector to increase leadership diversity and impact (2023) on how adapting leadership models is leading to change who takes up and is appointed to senior roles in the cultural sector. The findings draw on existing research into co-leadership and diversity from a range of sectors internationally including healthcare, higher education, non-profits and business, as well as presenting new research gathered from a survey and over forty interviews with sector specialists, current leaders and trustees undertaken in autumn 2022. The report also includes 11 case studies of co-leadership in practice, sharing stories of how these models emerged, how the work and the benefits and challenges of working in this way.

We will be joined by guest speakers:

  • Anna Herrmann, joint Artistic Director and CEO of Clean Break
  • Euella Jackson, Co-Director of Rising Arts
  • Neils de Vos, Chair of the Birmingham Museum Trust
  • Parminder Dosanjh and Sajida Carr, Co-Directors of Creative Black Country

Together they will explore the insights and experiences of co-leadership, its benefits to diversifying senior leadership, the tools needed for co-leadership to thrive and to manage any risks that co-leadership implies.

  • How do you encourage Boards to think about adapting leadership models?
  • What support do co-leaders need to make it work well?
  • What are the benefits, how can it become sustainable, and should the onus be on recruiters to embrace, champion and normalise co-leadership as an option?

Please join us if you:

  • Have experience of working in a co-leadership model
  • Are a CEO or senior leader interested in exploring how co-leadership might work for your organisation in the future
  • Have experience working with co-leaders – for example as a team member, board member or HR colleague
  • Trustees leading on succession planning for your organisation
  • Recruitment and search agencies
Reserve your free ticket here

This research was supported by Clore Leadership, Arts Humanities Research Council

New programmes for 2022

by Richard Watts

This is a season of promises isn’t it? Who hasn’t described an aspiration or commitment without the means to deliver on it?
We want to put heart and substance back into good intentions and have designed a range of programmes for 2022 and beyond, to support you to manifest those manifestos and create breakthroughs in areas that have proved hard to shift.
Designed specifically so that you, your organisation, group or network can build these services and programmes into the organisation development plans you are writing right now – so you can make concrete, resourced plans that you know will mean you deliver on your intentions, they have been shaped through our direct work with more than 250 NPO organisations in the last funding round, to create options you can buy into now, or budget to engage with in the years to come.
Find out more and select from the options below, or get in touch so we can create a tailored plan with you – an “application-ready” Organisation Development, Transformation or Workforce development Plan… created together and designed so you can deliver on those promises.

Which of these programmes might be most useful for you?

Office for Leadership Transition

The Office for Leadership Transition work with Boards and Executive Directors to transition their leadership teams and create inclusive change. We are committed to helping cultural leaders to enable a proactive, dynamic and supported transformation of representation at the tops of their cultural organisations to better reflect the audiences and communities that they exist to serve.

Get involved

Creating Transformation

Creating Transformation provides sustained and immersive support for all arts and cultural organisations across the UK. With 18 months of intensive learning, workshops, mentoring, action learning, tools, resources and personal development Creating Transformation enables organisations to re-model, re-shape, realign, refocus and reimagine their futures. This programme is for organisations who are hungry to lead the sector to become more relevant, equitable, sustainable, resilient, dynamic, ambitious, creative and socially just.

Get involved

Transforming Governance

A multi-layered change programme facilitating a national Governance Reset across all boards within the cultural sector, pro-actively supporting organisations to re-distribute power and agency and deliver on their responsibilities around representation and cultural democracy.

Get involved

Brokering wider, deeper relationships

Our response to the recent ‘Addendum to guidance for NPO application’ from Arts Council England: a new brokering service to support you to create wider, deeper relationships across England, realising your goals for greater impact, and the Arts Council’s goal for more equitably distributed cultural investment, experiences and infrastructure.

Get involved

Green Light: Programming for Environmental Responsabilty

A series of masterclasses, for organisations and practitioners looking for inspiration and tools to help them embed Arts Council England’s ‘Environmental Responsibility’ investment principle into their creative programmes for the upcoming NPO application round or beyond.  This programme is in collaboration with Invisible Dust, a sector leader in curating climate art-science projects since 2009.

Get involved

Organisational Development for Global Majority Cultural Workers

A co-created skills sharing and development programme for, with and by freelance cultural workers of colour who have experience of, or ambition to, support cultural organisations to transform, shift their cultures and develop new ways of working.

Get involved

Holistic support and practices for organisational wellbeing

A bespoke and adaptive programme of holistic and wellbeing practices and perspectives, enabling individuals to recognise and hold their power, explore vulnerabilities, build their capacity for resilience and open to creating positive change. 

Get involved

If you can’t see a programme that suits you, do get in touch using the contact form below.

Perhaps we can shape something together? And if you’re looking for bespoke service and packages, we’ve got that covered too:

 

Services and packages

 

  • In house Leadership development programme – We’ll work with you to define a programme of leadership development.  Designed and built in partnership, delivered in house, we’ll create a programme to ensure you meet your Leadership and Management development goals.
  • Organisational Development Club – Fixed cost, predictable investment solution. Organisation Development support from people make it work when you need it throughout the year
  • Peer Exchange – A blended package to enable you to learn with partners, colleagues or place-wide partnerships
  • Governance Review – A tailored package to help you create a modern, agile and representative trustee body and workplan that will truly support your organisation, vision and impact.

Get in touch